Here's something I never saw before. This is from a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story on Sept. 12, 2001:

www.post-gazette.com

quote: At the John P. Murtha Johnstown-Cambria County Airport near Johnstown, a call from air traffic controllers in Cleveland set off 10 minutes of high tension before the plane crashed 14 miles southeast of the airport.

Dennis Fritz, the air traffic manager, got a call from controllers in Cleveland warning the Johnstown airport -- which has no radar of its own -- that a large aircraft was 20 miles south and had suddenly turned on a heading for Johnstown.

"It was an aircraft doing some unusual maneuvers at a low level, which is unusual for an aircraft that size," Fritz said last night. "It happened so quickly."

He said workers in his own tower scanned south, toward the horizon, with binoculars, but couldn't see any aircraft, leading Fritz to believe that the plane was flying somewhere in the 2,800 foot high ridges in that part of the Allegheny front.

Then, somewhere within the air zone, about 15 miles south of Johnstown, the plane turned again toward the south.

There are three important details in this story:

1) The timing is narrowed down as to when Johnstown ACT was told to evacuate, roughly "10 minutes" before the crash. This would put the time at almost the exact time that the Pittsburgh ATC was told to evacuate, at 9:49 am.

2) This report specifically says that the aircraft turned from the south to head north towards Johnstown from 20 miles away. This would put Flight 93 almost directly above Shanksville at 9:49 am, 14 minutes before the crash.

3) This report says that Flight 93 turned again, this time towards the south, when it was 15 miles south of Johnstown.

But this doesn't make sense. A car going 60 miles an hour goes 5 miles in 5 minutes. A jet going 500 mph would go 40 miles in 5 minutes, not 5 miles.

So if we believe the official flight path, at 9:49 am, Flight 93 should have been 14 minutes from Shanksville, or about 116 miles away, which would put it near the Pittsburgh Airport, which had just been ordered to be evacuated at 9:49 am. But the Pittsbrugh Airport is north of Johnstown, not south.

Flight 93 could not be in two places at once, could it?

But there's more... Check this out....

From the same article:

quote: Shortly before it went down, another call was made to the Westmoreland County 911 center from a Mount Pleasant Township resident who said he could see a large plane flying low and banking from side to side.

(Also note that it was this same Westmoreland County 911 center that received the call from the passenger in the bathroom of Flight 93 that reported that he saw smoke in the plane. )

Now look at a map of the area around Shanksville. Mt. Pleasant is South West of Johnstown.

maps.google.com

If somebody in Mt. Pleasant saw the plane it would corroborate the report that the plane actually WAS SOUTH of Johnstown. Of course this would also conflict with the "official" report that Flight 93 was coming in over Johnstown from the NW.

Interestingly, the Pittsburgh Airport is located adjacent to a large Air National Guard base, and the crash site at Shanksville is located a few miles from a National Guard Armory. And of course, don't forget that the C-130H was a National Guard plane.

And here's one more interesting detail about the Johnstown airport from this same story:

quote:

Joseph McKelvey, executive director of the Johnstown-area airport, said he didn't know whether it would be an operations headquarters or serve as a morgue.

But as he spoke, one of the few planes in the skies over America, a United Airlines 727 arrived carrying what McKelvey said was equipment for the recovery, and a half dozen rental trucks pulled into the airport to carry the equipment to the crash scene.

"This is the one airport [in the region] that can handle about any aircraft in the world," McKelvey said. Normally, the Johnstown airport handles five commercial passenger flights a day.

Last night police and National Guard sealed off the airport to regular traffic, at one point shutting down state Route 219 a four-lane highway that is only 500 yards from airport property. It was later reopened, but access roads to the airport remained sealed.

So we also learn that the Johnstown Airport can handle any aircraft in the world, and that the National Guard not only sealed off the airport, they actually shut down the state highway that leads to the airport, which is about 30 miles away from the crash site. Why?

And why would the Johnstown airport be built to handle any type of aircraft in the world? Johnstown is a small town in the middle of nowhere. Is it really a military airport maybe?